Page 29 of Shamefully Trained

I had seen canes. Not in life, exactly, but enough in stray stories and images and the vague cultural atmosphere around men like him and the systems that served them. A belt belonged to ordinary male anger in my mind, ugly but familiar—and distressingly arousing. A cane belonged to something colder. More deliberate. More absolute.

“No,” I whispered.

His expression didn’t change. “Then obey.”

That should have been the moment I walked out.

I knew that. In some hard, lucid corner of my mind, I knew it perfectly. The door was there. My clothes were on. He wasn’t holding me down. I could leave this pretty little bathroom, push back through the café, go up into the ordinary city, and never see him again.

But the thought of the cane had gone through me with such force that I felt myself reaching, almost automatically, for the buttons of my blouse.

I have no choice, I told myself.

A quieter voice answered at once, from somewhere still sane: Of course you have a choice. You’re making one.

I silenced it.

I have no choice. He’ll whip me. With a cane. I couldn’t bear it. I have no choice.

My fingers moved badly at first. I nearly missed a button. I could feel him watching, and that made my face burn all the hotter. I slipped the blouse off my shoulders and folded it before I could stop myself from doing something so absurdly mannered. The gesture made me want to die. It also seemed perfectly in character for me, which made it worse.

My skirt came next.

I have no choice.

I stood in the ivory bra-and-panty lingerie he had ordered me to wear, exposed enough that I wanted to cover myself and too far gone to do it.

His gaze traveled over me in one slow pass that made every inch of my skin feel newly awake.

“There,” he said quietly. “Better.”

I felt a deep furrow develop on my brow.

He came toward me then, and I took a backward half-step before I could stop myself. He didn’t comment on it. He only took my wrist and turned me with effortless certainty.

“Bend over the toilet.”

My heart lurched. “Porter⁠—”

His hand closed around the back of my neck, not rough, just decisive. “Now. And you just earned extra spanking. You will call me sir.”

I obeyed.

The porcelain was cool under my palms. I heard the rustle of my own breathing in the small room. Then I felt his hand slide over the curve of my bottom, over the thin fabric of my panties, and a helpless shiver went through me.

“Spread your legs.”

I hesitated perhaps half a second. His hand rested, waiting.

I moved my feet apart.

“Wider.”

I did.

The position felt instantly pornographic. Bent over a toilet in my lingerie, thighs parted, waiting for him. I could feel wetness already between my legs, humiliatingly undeniable. I heard him shift behind me, close enough that I could sense his heat without his touching me.

Then his palm cupped me through the damp silk at the front of my panties.